MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[1553] I don't care what I said, but often darker than now, whereas
ou^t there up in the sky it is black night, with few stars, just
enough to show that the black night I see is truly of mankind
and not merely painted on the window-pane, for they tremble,
like true stars, ^as they would not do if they were painted.

[1554] And
as if that were not enough to satisfy me it is the outer
world, the other world, suddenly the window across the way
lights up, or suddenly I realize it is lit up, for I am not one
of those people who can take in everything at a single glance,
but I have to look long and fixedly and give things time to
travel the long road that lies between me and them.

[1555] And that in-
deed is a happy chance and augurs well, unless it be devised on
purpose to make mock of me, for I might have found nothing better
to speed me from this place than the nocturnal sky where nothing
happens, though it is full of tumult and violence, [1556] nothing unless
you have the whole night before you to follow the slow fall and
rise of other worlds, when there are any, or watch out for the
meteors, and I have not the whole night before me.

[1557] And it does
not matter to me whether they have risen before dawn, or not yet
gone to bed, or risen in the middle of the night intending per-
haps to go back to bed when they have finished, and it is
enough for me to see them standing up against each ^other behind
the curtain, which is dark, so that it is a dark light, if one
may say so, and dim the shadow they cast. For they cleave so
fast together that they seem a single body, and consequently a